“Welcome. Oh, look at you. You are well grown. Your menses have come already, yes? Is your voice settled yet?” She pauses but does not seem to notice too much when she gets no answer. “You read music? Possibly you were not taught—but you are not to worry; it is not as difficult as they make out. Still, your voice will learn it quicker than your mind. I have scored your part in the Gradual for the upper register, but it can be adapted easily enough if you have more depth. It moves like this.”
And she opens her mouth onto a tumble of hummed notes, bubbling up faster even than her speech and, to Zuana’s ears at least, impossible to follow. Serafina, though, is clearly listening, even if she never lifts her eyes from the ground.
Benedicta stops. “Will that be too high for you?”
In the silence that follows there is a snigger from somewhere within the choir, audible to everyone but Benedicta.
“What? What is it? Are you not well?”
“I do not sing anymore,” she says finally, her voice now more cracked and splintered than Zuana knows it to be.
“But why?” She comes over to her, ignoring Zuana but grabbing hold of the young woman’s hands. “Oh, but you are so cold. You have been outside? No wonder your voice is gone. It is a chill. The wind often steals the best voices. Or a strain, perhaps, from your long journey here. You must take care of yourself and do exactly as Suora Zuana tells you. Though she herself has been given only a mediocre instrument, God has compensated her with a prodigious talent to help others.” And she beams benignly at Zuana.
“Eugenia.” She turns back to the choir. “Come. Sing the part for our new novice, so she can have the notes in her head while her voice is healing.”
In the front row, young Eugenia, who could barely keep her eyes open last night in chapel, is now as chirpy as a newly fledged bird. As she puffs up her feathers to sing, Zuana notices the hint of what is surely a wispy curl peeking out from under her headband, homage no doubt to the abbess’s change of style.
“Surge, illuminare, Jerusalem …”
The words turn to burnished silver in her mouth. She is young and one of the best voices in the choir, with a healthy appetite for the gossip and drama of convent life. Six months before, she had arrived in Zuana’s dispensary nursing a limp from an infected splinter embedded while walking on Christ’s crown of thorns to share His Passion. Only it had begun to hurt so much that now she wanted it taken out. A week later she was chasing squirrels through the orchard during free time, her high spirits more infectious and inspiring than her halfhearted attempts at mortification. Zuana has felt a certain fondness toward her ever since.
“…alleluia.”
Those who know might say she holds the last note a little too long, as befits a songbird marking her territory against possible newcomers. In church no doubt it would have a few young bloods constructing their own versions of heaven.
All eyes are now on Serafina. She is standing taut, her face drawn and pale, her skin almost gray, her eyes focused somewhere out in front of her. Slowly she bends over, one arm clutched over her stomach.
As her head comes up again, Zuana thinks for a moment she might even be laughing—something about the way she is catching her breath. In the choir someone giggles nervously. Too late, Zuana realizes what is happening.
Serafina opens her mouth, and the retching sound that comes out is followed by an arching stream of bile.
CHAPTER FIVE
“DRINK IT.”
The girl shakes her head.
“It is only water with an infusion of ginger.”
“In which case, you drink it.”
Zuana lifts the clay pot and takes a mouthful.
“Ask any of the sisters; my poisons are faster-acting than my remedies. If I am still on my feet now, you can be sure it is benign.” She takes another gulp, then puts the pot down in front of the girl. “You can do as you wish, but if you want to stop the sickness I suggest you take it.”
As she hopes, the edge of impatience in her voice sparks something in the novice’s eyes. She picks it up and drinks, small sips first, then deeper ones. They sit in silence while Zuana makes herself busy clearing away bottles and measuring bowls. When she turns back, the girl has more color in her cheeks.
“Better?”
“What was in it?”
“I told you: ginger root. It is good for the stomach.”
“I meant last night’s poison.”
“Ah. Nightshade, wolfsbane, crushed poplar leaves, poppy syrup.”
“And what part of that is making me sick now?”
“The poppy, I suspect. It seems to linger in the body longer.”
Serafina is sitting on the windowsill in the dispensary. Outside, in the distance, a simple plot of land marks the convent cemetery: a history of piety arranged in lines of small neat wooden crosses. Zuana chose to avoid it in her tour, and it is best if it remains unnoticed now.
“Did you dream?”
She nods slowly clearly unsure how much to tell. It is a reticence Zuana remembers well. In the early days, the horror of incarceration could make her suspicious of even the simplest intercessions and kindnesses.
“Nightmares?”
“I was drowning.” The girl’s voice is dark with the memory. “The water was stone, liquid stone. I kept trying to shout, but each time I opened my mouth more of it poured in.”
How many stories like this one has Zuana heard? Her father used to keep records of them, for he was interested in how the ancients had studied dreams and what one could learn from them. Those induced by the poppy were often the wildest, as the drug seems to feed off the anxieties and fears of the person taking it.
“The mixture can set off strange visions. But they will be gone soon enough.”
“Unlike me?” the girl says tartly. She takes another sip. “I won’t stay here, you know. The words came from my mouth, not my heart.”
She is fierce again, head down, determined.
Zuana watches her quietly. Of course they will have discussed it, the two of them together in the abbess’s chamber: how any novice forced into a convent against her will can after a year refuse to take her final vows and petition the bishop for her release. What else would they have talked about? Certainly the abbess would have seen it as her duty to emphasize the disgrace of such an action, to explain how, if the convent was unable to soothe the trouble at the source, there was scarcely a bishop in the church who would listen to such a protest, let alone a family that would be willing to take her back. So that in the end the only real choice open to a young woman was to yell herself into crazed silence or, with God’s grace, find the wit to turn rebellion into acceptance of what cannot be resisted. Just as so many others had done before her.
“You think I’ll change my mind!”
“I have no idea what you will do. Though since my stock of wolfsbane has been damaged by the frost, and it works as well with toothache as it does with tantrums, I hope you won’t spend too much time screaming in the night.”
“If I did, I wouldn’t take your potions. I—ah!” She stops, bringing her hands up over her ears.
“What is it? Are you sick again?”
She shakes her head. “There is a throbbing behind my eyes.”
“It’s the pressure of the headscarf. You can hear your own voice echoing between your ears? You will feel it more acutely when you start to sing. Who dressed you this morning?”
“I …I don’t know. She had a fat nose and a wart on her chin.”
Ah, malice rather than mischief. “Augustina. The butcher’s daughter. She grew up wringing the necks of chickens and likes to practice her skills elsewhere. You would do better to find someone else to tend your cell.”